6. Zhuang: A Tai language with some Sinitic characteristics. Postverbal 'can' in Zhuang, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Lao

Rint Sybesma

This paper deals with an areal feature shared by languages spoken in Indo-China and Southern China, namely, the presence of a modal element in a for these languages a-typical post-verbal position. In this paper we investigate the properties of this element in Cantonese, Lao, Vietnamese and Zhuang. One of the questions we focus on is the fact that the element in question can be translated with ‘can’, but the languages differ in that only in a subset of them, it can mean ‘can-ability’. It turns out that the interpretational properties of the element is tightly interrelated with both syntactic and interpretational properties of the resultative construction.

Published online: 06 February 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.90.06syb

Cited by

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Bit-Chee, Kwok, Andy C. Chin & Benjamin K. Tsou

2011. Poly-functionality of the preverbal “acquire” in the Nanning Yue dialect of Chinese: an areal perspective. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 74:1 ► pp. 119 ff.

Huang, Yang & Fuxiang Wu

2018. In New Trends in Grammaticalization and Language Change [Studies in Language Companion Series, 202], ► pp. 105 ff.

Ngai, Sing Sing

2015. In Causation, Permission, and Transfer [Studies in Language Companion Series, 167], ► pp. 253 ff.

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